The performance of a cellular network is affected by a collection of factors such as the data and voice traffic load, the RF coverage, the level of inter-cell interference, the location of users, and hardware failures. In many cases, the performance of a few wireless cells within a cellular network may appear abnormal, and mobile users that are served by these cells will suffer from poor user experience. A poor user experience will give rise to customer dissatisfaction.
Cell network operators often need to detect the abnormal behaviors and then take actions to fix the problems before the situation deteriorates. Operators rely so called Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Quality Indicators (KQIs) to measure performance of a cellular network. KPI's or KQI's such as access setup success rate, average cell throughput, or average throughput per user device reflect the quality of the network and user experience. These performance indicators are closely monitored by the operators. Operators use these performance indicators to forecast future KPI's when the traffic or number of users in a cell is increasing or before any network changes take place.
A KPI is generally a time series quantification of a particular performance factor indicating the performance of network. Examples include downlink average cell throughput including all user equipment in each cell in a cellular network, downlink average throughput per user equipment in each cell in a cellular network, or total transmitted bits at each cell in a cellular network. Accurate prediction of the KPIs is very important in service provisioning and network planning, such as foreseeing whether the network supported capacity is meeting user equipment demand. If not, network managers can, for example, add new base stations to the network to address potential resource or capacity issues.